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This paper introduces modular and context-aware evaporative cooling for the outdoor urban environment as a physical structure that could be implemented at various scales and physical contexts. We propose a technique for collecting occupancy and climatic data to create a computational context and optimise its operation. We then outline a concept for developing a predictive algorithm that would further enhance its performance. The research focuses on the interaction between the proposed system and the environment and establishes an evidence-based technique to balance the temperature drop and the humidity it generates. The study combines architectural design, mechanical engineering and computer science to enable the upscaled application of evaporative cooling to help reduce local heat accumulation in cities.

In this paper we present a conceptual solution of modular panel for measuring health parameters of the elderly. The conceptual solution was followed by a study that analyzed the design and evaluated interface of the system. Modular panel contains sensors, processing unit, and interface enabling data acquisition and communication between the user and the medical staff. Positioning of the panel within the residential unit was determined by the categories of actions which it should provide and functional areas of typical housing unit. Interface design is based on a specific type of users and is on the basis of the type of data that should be collected and displayed. Evaluation of interface is conducted by using two user groups, where the first is made up of people older than 60 years and represents the interest group of the study, while the second group consisted of people younger than 60 years as the control group. The collected data were analyzed and the results indicate that the simplicity of the interface suits good to the users. Elderly users need more time to conduct certain commands, but most of them understood interface completely. The limitations of the system, such as lack of information provided for the users, will be considered in the future work.

Comunicació presentada a: ICALT 2020 International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies and Technology-enhanced Learning, organitzada a Tartu, Estònia, del 6 al 9 de juliol de 2020 Self-reports of affective states are increasingly being collected in educational settings. However, individual definitions and usage of emotion and mood terms are often subjective despite objective definitions becoming more widely accepted. We explore whether the variation among individual learners in how mood terms are defined presents an obstacle to using self-reported mood data for group comparison studies. Following a design-based research methodology, we ran two case studies to explore the use of ClassMood App in a multimodal learning study and the validity of the self-reported mood data it collected. During the first case, 24 primary school students experienced difficulty understanding the words used to describe the moods in ClassMood App. In the second case, involving 77 university students, we explored whether the misunderstanding of mood words persisted with older students. Participants were asked to rate their familiarity with and match definitions to a set of 8 mood words. We found that levels of familiarity with the mood words varied greatly and 17.9% of all definition matching attempts were incorrect. The results suggest that the variation in subjective definitions of mood terms is likely to affect the validity of the data collected by the ClassMood App for group comparison studies. This work has been partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund, Erasmus+, and the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, under project grants TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R, 2018-1-ESOI-KA20I-050646, and MDM-2015-0502. D. Hernández-Leo acknowledges the support by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.

The orchestration of collaborative learning activities in technology-enhanced classrooms has become a nontrivial endeavor for educators. Depending on the behaviors and needs of students that emerge in real educational situations, educators may need to orchestrate activity adaptations on the fly. These adaptations may range from the provision of additional scaffolding by the educator (e.g., the educator's participation in a group discussion) to a change in the planned pedagogical scenario (e.g., the duration). This article aims to contribute to the orchestration of technology-mediated collaborative learning sessions in a classroom context. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a teacher-facing dashboard that supports teachers in orchestrating scripted collaboration. Evaluation studies were conducted in 16 classroom sessions. The findings indicate that teachers found the information on the dashboard to be actionable and help facilitate just in time support to student groups. This work has been partially funded by "la Caixa Foundation" (CoT project, 100010434) and the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015- 0502, TIN2014-53199-C3-3-R, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Advances in the field of multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) research is often accomplished by actively exploring new technologies and techniques related to the collection and analysis of data. Exploration of ethical principles and procedures for governing the use of new technologies and techniques, however, is not as readily pursued. As collected data grow in complexity and invasiveness, potentially, a growing need is arising to scrutinize ethical aspects of MMLA research. In our study, we introduce an informed consent comprehension test for educational technology research and assess the effects of enhancing MMLA consent forms on comprehension of informed consent and on rates of enrollment in a MMLA study. One form is written from a researcher perspective and the other from a participant perspective. Results of the study involving first‐year undergraduate students suggest that the overall level of comprehension did not differ between conditions. Yet, the participant‐oriented consent form resulted in significantly lower rates of enrollment. Implications for MMLA researchers are discussed. This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under MDM-2015-0502, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R. D. Hernández-Leo acknowledges financial support by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme.

Comunicació presentada a: 10th International Learning and Analytics Conference (LAK 2020), el 24 de març de 2020, virtualment. In this workshop paper, we report a study conducted to investigate the use of tracking technologies to measure the teachers’ orchestration load when conducting colocated collaborative learning activities. We distinguish the orchestration load experienced by the teachers in the absence and presence of teacher supporting tools, i.e. teacher-facing dashboards. Electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor and other multimodal data including observations, log data and subjective responses to questionnaires have been collected to measure the teachers’ orchestration load in authentic collaborative learning scenarios. This workshop paper presents the study context, quantitative and qualitative data collection process undertaken and other considerations in detail. This work has been partially funded by FEDER, the national research agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015-0502, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Comunicació presentada a: EC-TEL 2019 celebrat a Delft, Països Baixos, del 16 al 19 de setembre de 2019. In this paper, we describe an exploratory study where we investigate the possibilities of motion capture system as an instrument to consider in multi-modal analyses of face-to-face collaborative learning scenarios. The goal is to understand to what extent motion capture can facilitate certain measurements leading to collaborative learning indicators that are currently time-consuming to achieve with other instruments. We focus on the simultaneous measurement of known physical collaboration indicators such as gaze direction, the distance be-tween learners and the speed of movement/reactions. The study considers a lab setting simulating a classroom scenario based on the Jigsaw collaborative learn-ing flow pattern, which proposes a sequence of activities with changes in group size and formation. Preliminary results indicate a high degree of applicability of the system in measuring these indicators, with certain limitations for gaze direc-tion measurements. With appropriate marker position on the participants, the sys-tem is able to automatically provide desired measurements with satisfactory pre-cision. Additionally, with a small number of additional markers, we were able to determine the way students used working surfaces (shared desks). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 713673. Milica Vujovic has received financial support through the “la Caixa” INPhINIT Fellowship Grant for Doctoral studies at Spanish Research Centres of Excellence, “la Caixa” Banking Foundation, Barcelona, Spain. This work has been partially supported by the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovations and Universities MDM-2015-0502, TIN2014- 53199-C3-3-R, TIN2017-85179-C3-3-R.

Thyroid hormone is a well-known regulator of brain, lung and kidney development and function. However, the molecular mechanisms by which the hormone exerts its function have remained largely enigmatic, and only a limited set of target genes have been identified in these tissues. Using a mouse model with a mutation in thyroid hormone receptor α1 (TRα1), we here demonstrate that the expression of carbonic anhydrase 4 in lung and brain of the adult animal depends on intact TRα1 signaling. In the kidney, carbonic anhydrase 4 mRNA and protein are not affected by the mutant TRα1, but are acutely repressed by thyroid hormone. However, neither lung function--as measured by respiration rate and oxygen saturation--nor urine pH levels were affected by altered carbonic anhydrase 4 levels, suggesting that other carbonic anhydrases are likely to compensate. Taken together, our findings identify a previously unknown marker of TRα1 action in brain and lung, and provide a novel negatively regulated target gene to assess renal thyroid hormone status.